Monday, February 27, 2012

West – To serve as a working Sheriff of McLennan County, a lawman first and an administrator second, Parnell McNamara has a two-pronged approach.

“I want to turn the heat up on the criminals as much as I can,” he says.

Here is how he and his sidekick intend to do the job.

First, drugs are the single most potent, acknowledged source of crime in any cop's book.

Either the victims of the drug trade's predatory nature of addiction - and the subsequent loss of moral fiber that always results - are selling dope, stealing to get more of it, or they're out of their minds due to its influence and mistreating their fellow humans as a result.

But there is a problem. There is nowhere for the average citizen to turn when it comes to fighting back against the kind of abuse the world of drugs thrusts upon them.

People who have to put up with all that misery seem to be on their own in a world populated with cops too busy to hear out their complaints.

The McLennan County Sheriff's Department eliminated the multi-agency drug task force some time during the first term of the Larry Lynch administration.

Parnell McNamara has a remedy for that, he told friends and supporters at a get together held at the Czech Inn in this community Sunday afternoon.

By reviving the Drug Task Force, an agency staffed by officers seconded from police agencies throughout the county, he intends to give his fellow citizens a friendly ear when it comes to doing something about the miserable conditions caused by drug use.

He recalled a case where a woman contacted him and he took her to see the narcotics officers of the now defunct drug task force. They arranged to have her persuade a certain drug dealer in a Waco suburb to sell her some cocaine.

“He wound up doing time in the penitentiary for that,” Marshal McNamara recalls.His sidekick, a retired Texas Ranger who now works as an agent of the Texas Department of Corrections, Institutional Division, is seconded to the U.S. Marshal's Service Fugitive Warrants Division.

He says there is a decided lack of cooperation from the Warrants Division of the McLennan County Sheriff's Office.

For instance, Matt Cawthon recalled during an interview following Marshall McNamara's campaign presentation, when investigators of the District Attorney's office were looking for about a dozen persons who had been indicted for Lone Star Card fraud, they learned that the post-indictment capias warrants were most definitely on file.

How about those arrest warrants, they asked the warrants division of the sheriff's office?

Oh, they had them. They were on file, just waiting to be served on an inter alia, unaided basis by police officers making their usual rounds who may have detained a man or woman on some matter, then learned the suspect is wanted under an indictment, sealed or otherwise.

The warramts were safe and secure in a filing cabinet, neatly logged in on a computer system, but they were as yet unserved.

That wasn't what they people from the DA's office were wanting. They wanted the deputies to actually get out there and serve the arrest warrants.

They were refused. The people in the warrants division turned them down.

Why?

He says the answer was simple enough.

Top-ranking officials of the Sheriff's Office claim they just don't have the resources to go out and serve every warrant.

Getting at the information as to exactly how many such warrants are languishing in the files is difficult.

Open records requests cannot be couched in the terms of an interrogatory. They must be specific as to what is requested, and not of a general nature, such as, “How many capias warrants do you have for Lone Star Card abuse?” or, even better, “How many outstanding capias warrants do you have on file?”

Ranger Cawthon estimates there are from 600 to 700 such warrants awaiting service.

To remedy that situation, all one needs to do is to staff an aggressive and proactive warrants division, and then let the deputies on that flying squad serve the arrest warrants as they are issued, according to Ranger Cawthon.

7 comments:

Wow, it would seem that getting information out of the McLennan County Sheriff's Office is like Congress getting information out of Eric Holder and the DOJ. What information you do get is only what they think you should have and it's nothing but junk. I guess the leaders of both organization have things to hide.

That is true of all area law enforcement agencies, with the exception of the U.S. Marshals Service Fugitive Warrants Task Force. They are courteous and forthcoming, answering requests with all due respect and without rancor, delay or recrimination.

What is needed at this point is to file suit against the McLennan County Sheriff's Office for declaratory and injunctive relief to seek a Court to order Sheriff Larry Lynch to release "first page" offense and arrest report information "promptyly." First page means date/time/place of offense/nature of offense/time of offense/defendant/complainant/weather at the time - all the basic information. Promptly means now - instanter - unless in the case of fatalities, the victims' next of kin have not been notified. Even then, the fact that an offense and/or arrest have taken place is an open record, just omitting the name of the deceased - that's all. For some reason, every cop shop out here says they have 10 days to release the information.

They are wrong. That is bogus. Too bad it takes walking into a courtroom to straighten it out.

Vote Parnell McNamara. He and his sidekick Matt Cawthon say they will release all information now, today, promptly. Period. No reason not to, they say. - The Legendary

What do Gates' electorial qualifications for past elections have to do with the price of tea in China?

In addition, from what I've seen, this site tries to report information, but like the stonewalling of the DOJ mentioned above, when only one side will give any information, that's the story you get. As I've seen reported on this site, they have made numerous attempts to get documentation from the Sheriff's Office that could either prove or disprove some of the arguements put forth, but so far their attempts seem to be blcoked. And when an organization blocks attempts to gain what should be public information, one can only ask, "What are they trying to hide?"

Thank you, Anonymous, for your kind words. The truth is, any request for information is routinely treated as an out of line request, one that will only buy the interlocutor trouble in the long run. They make intense efforts to huff, puff, make faces and try to intimidate and frighten you into feeling guilty about asking a perfectly fair question.

Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum...etc. On the other hand, the truth is that the information so requested is perfectly within the realm of the public information outlined by Texas law. The is furthermore very plain. Most Texas communities don't make any big deal out of any of this stuff. These people are bullies, plain and simple. They're doing a land office business in fascism and totalitarian behavior - and getting away with it. What information takes buckets of blood and gallons of sweat to obtain here is such a matter of routine in other Texas counties and cities, it's really ludicrous to behold.

What is the reason for the Wizard's adamant refusal to cut loose with the info? Think about it. There is a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow, you bet.

Why do these folks get away with this stuff? Because the people who are charged with leadership roles, the ones who take a paycheck to see to it that we don't have to put up with this are too lick-spittle, lapdog timid to do their jobs - that's why. - The Legendary